[Statement from the Taiwan Association of Human Rights] Statement to respond the the Ministry of the Interior on April 23 regarding the digital ID
Since several civil rights group has initiated a petition and statement about "opposing the full renewal of chip identity cards" policy made by the Ministry of Interior (MOI). On April 23, MOI claimed that civil rights groups might misunderstand their policy. Taiwan Association for Human Rights reply again as the followingresponse:
- TAHR raise the petition of "Opposing the Full Renewal of Chip Identity Cards", and proposes that "1. Chipless ID cards should be retained", "2. Renewal should be suspended, and laws or legislation should be revised first", and "3. Establishing an independent Privacy Protection Authority". These three demands are not concerned of whether the digital ID would be decided to turn on or off by cardholders, but of how the Ministry of Interior forces a system overhaul of traits unrelated of house registry information. Would it conform to the constitutional protections? Would privacy and information security risk of Taiwan’s democratic system could be avoided from China in the long-run? There is no misunderstanding of the current policy to the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and we hope that the Ministry of the Interior will not arbitrarily distort or misunderstand the appeals and reasons for its own policy interests.”
- The petition proposed this time states the relevant objections in various appeals. The Ministry of the Interior put forward the statement that "the household registration law has been authorized." The joint statement has already pointed out its mistakes in bold under "Appeal 1". The Ministry of the Interior proposed "entering the password to read personal information", but the solution is unable to solve the privacy and information security risks questioned in "Appeal 2". The Ministry of the Interior failed to carefully understand the true meaning of this petition’srequest and has only responded tit-for-tat, which does not help resolve the dispute.
- The main target of this petitionis addressed to the Executive Yuan and the ruling party. Since the renewal plan for the ID card was approved by the "Premier of the Executive Yuan" Su Zhenchang in June 2019, the decision-making power of this policy changes has surpassed the level of the Ministry of the Interior. While the Ministry of the Interior continues to be stubborn and disregards the concerns and demands from thecivil society, we will still hope that the head of the country's highest administrative organ and the ruling party that has just received a majority in Congress can listen to the concerns of professional public opinion.
- So far, nearly 200 experts and scholars have participated in this joint signature. From next Monday (April 27), all citizens are free to sign the petition.
▌Petition site: https://sites.google.com/tahr.org.tw/anti-eid-petition/
▌News contributor: Ho Ming Syuan
